In your face and behind closed doors

Whichever way you look at it, sex in our (western) society is something of an idee fixe. It also appears to be a series of reactionary cycles where various constituents repress and others flaunt. Altogether I find that the notion has been reified all out of proportion and context- be it regarding sexual orientation, sex and gendered roles, sexuality, sex in advertising and marketing and sexual education or what have you.

So anyway, over to you guys: what do you think are, and what do you think of the social mechanisms that comprise our cultural dynamic on sex?

Whichever way you look at it, sex in our (western) society is something of an idee fixe. It also appears to be a series of reactionary cycles where various constituents repress and others flaunt. Altogether I find that the notion has been reified all out of proportion and context- be it regarding sexual orientation, sex and gendered roles, sexuality, sex in advertising and marketing and sexual education or what have you.

So anyway, over to you guys: what do you think are, and what do you think of the social mechanisms that comprise our cultural dynamic on sex?

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Personally, I am of the opinon that far too much is made of sex - both from the perspective of turning it into something that is evil and must be censored and from the completely opposite approach of going out of one's way to flaunt it in the faces of others.

How much better things would be in my opinion if we simply saw sex as one part of our lives and not a defining aspect of who we are. If we saw sex as a means for consenting adults to relate to one another, should they choose to do so.

Ideally, we should be able to not be concerned with determining what amounts to a "normal" amount of sex, what positions are politically and religiously approved, and what gender one may relate to sexually, and leave that to the discretion of the two people in question.

But I fear the very fiber of our society is built so deeply on marketing and exploiting the mystique of sex - whether that exploitation be to repress it or bottle and sell it at a furious pace - that we are a long long way from adopting a live and let live approach to sexual matters.